Head for Beaverton's Cooper Mountain for a bird's-eye view; five more butte top hikes, too

View full sizeTerry Richard/The OregonianThe trail at Cooper Mountain Nature Park at the edge of Beaverton.

With winter on its way out after one last hurrah, Portlanders are looking for things to do outside.

May as well visit one of the parks we helped buy with money raised through the 1995 greenspaces bond measure.

The new nature park atop Cooper Mountain, the butte where the south
ends of Beaverton and Aloha meet, has quickly become a showpiece since
opening in 2009 in a partnership of Metro and the Tualatin Hills
Park and Recreation District.

The Washington County park district has other parks with trails
(notably Tualatin Hills Nature Park, Jenkins Estate and Greenway Park),
but it's tough to top the view of the Tualatin Valley and Chehalem
Mountain from Cooper Mountain's open south slope.

Cooper Mountain Nature Park has 3.5 miles of gravel surface trails over
its 231 acres. The looping trail system covers well the public land at
the summit of the 774-foot high butte.

The parking lot and Nature House, with restrooms, playground and native
plant garden, are near the top of the butte. That means trails head
downward to the views, best during winter and early spring when native
Oregon white oaks are without leaves.

Cooper Mountain also has a good number of Pacific madrone, those messy
but beautiful trees that constantly shed leaves and bark. They need
rocky, well-drained soil to thrive, so they indicate a prairie habitat
that attracts alligator lizards and nesting bluebirds in spring.

Signposts at trail junctions make it easy to figure out where you are
and where you want to go. The trails loop together, except a spur off
Little Prairie Loop that ends at a viewpoint.

This is a "must-do" park, with its bucolic view of distant ranges that
make up Yamhill County wine country. Sit down and stay a spell.

If you go: Cooper Mountain Nature Park is at 18892 S.W. Kemmer Road. Get
there by driving south on 170th and then 175th avenue from the Tualatin
Valley Highway. Where 175th climbs to a saddle, turn west on Kemmer
Road and follow it to the park entrance on the left. The parking lot has
40 spaces, but they can fill up on nice days. There is no off-site
parking, so don't risk a ticket. Dogs are not allowed in Metro's nature
parks.

The park's Nature House hosts a variety of youth programs and is a
meeting place for public hikes and bird walks. For information, call
503-629-6350 or look online at thprd.org.

Here are five more hike-to-the-top buttes in Oregon:

Come and
explore an old cinder cone located just east of Bend. Hike up and around
on one of three trails. The trails wind through stands of juniper and
sage. All of the trails lead to the summit of Pilot Butte. Once at the top, get ready
for a grand panoramic view of the high desert.

The summit of Gray Butte gives a bird's-eye view of bustling central
Oregon, east of U.S. 97 between Madras and Redmond. From the top of the 5,108-foot butte, binoculars give hikers a
view that includes the Cascade volcanoes from California's Mount Shasta
on the south to Washington's Mount Adams on the north.

Mount Talbert in Clackamas offers a surprising wild feeling for such an urban setting, more akin
to hiking in the Mount Hood National Forest than a suburban
neighborhood.